Interop: To Users, Only Applications and Devices Matter

While there are a lot of issues facing IT and a lot of opinions about how to deal with them, only two things really matter: applications and devices. That is, according to Marc Randall, senior vice president and general manager of Avaya Networking, who discussed this in an Interop keynote speech today.

While there are a lot of issues facing IT and a lot of opinions about how to deal with them, only two things really matter to users: applications and devices. That is, according to Marc Randall, senior vice president and general manager of Avaya Networking, who discussed this in an Interop keynote speech today.

Randall went on to explain users also want things to be "cloud easy"—in other words, very easy to use and implement. He told the IT audience that their users will measure them by the services they deliver to end users, and that those users will use consumer cloud services as a benchmark.

There are three main roadblocks to this: an inconsistent access experience, box-centric configuration, and the silos that split applications and networking.

To address the access issue, Randall suggests that IT organizations establish a universal identity for the network that follows you wherever you go, on any device and medium, and is automatically configured.

To prevent having to reconfigure each "box" on the network, he suggests companies implement an Ethernet fabric through the enterprise. In the data center, fabrics give you faster time to service, lower latency, and error reduction (because of fewer misconfigurations). But, he said, the concept should be extended to the entire enterprise including branch offices and multiple campuses.

He proposed that applications should recognize the identity of the individual and the type of application, thus creating a "virtual service network."

Finally, he talked about "application driven networking," where the application tells the network its needs and the network communicates back to the application about the quality of connections. When you get all three in place, Randall said, you get a network that is cloud easy.

As a demonstration, he showed off Avaya's video conferencing and collaboration solution with a new "session to go" feature that sends audio and video to another device; it can move a conversation from a tablet to a large screen monitor or move it from a PC to a mobile device by scanning a barcode.

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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